Life at the Margins of Law and Order: James Macpherson – The Scottish Robin Hood

This chapter will explore how forms of criminality and the individuals who perpetrated it were regarded in early modern Scotland, before the introduction of a centralised judiciary and long before the advent of press sensationalism, which served to hyperbolise deviancy and bad behaviour into an enduring threat. Was seventeenth century crime regarded as a necessary evil to alleviate hardship or distress? Was it universally frowned upon and rooted out by the early Scottish authorities? Or did attitudes to criminality depend on the individual criminal concerned, the type of offences he or she carried out, or even the impact that those offences had on the status, power and persona of the victims affected?
To answer these questions, this chapter will focus on the life of the Highland outlaw, James Macpherson. Macpherson was a man who lived at the margins of several aspects of early modern Scottish society due to his heritage, his upbringing, his associates, the locus of his activities, and undoubtedly the nature of his misdeeds and the individuals he targeted. Modern writers have described Macpherson as the Scottish Robin Hood, but he is much more than that, as we know he definitely existed and we know his infamy to be warranted. This chapter will not only explain why his place is the annals of Scottish crime is assured, but it will also explore the impact and legacy that Macpherson had on the shape of Scottish justice and where the margins of right and wrong came to sit as a result of his endeavour and renown.